How to lose 50 IMPs in a 12-board Individual

Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly masochistic, I enter one of the ACBL individual tournaments. The denizens of this particular enclave are all regulars. I have notes on many of the players. Of course one's result is almost entirely the luck of the draw. It's seldom that I make an error so egregious that it significantly affects my score as the standard of play is so bad that you really have to go out of your way to lose a board all on your own. So, basically my score is always a combination of my so-called partners' efforts and those of my opponents.

Today's was exceptional. Board one was uneventful. The opponents bid and made a game. Lose one IMP.  The second board was where the (un) fun started. My CHO (partner) was in 3NT:

As you can see (by pressing Next), declarer won the opening lead in dummy and proceeded to cash the CA just in case it "went away." Then they figured that since they were there for the last time, it might be a good idea to take a finesse. There was only one suit with a finessing position and that was hearts. So, despite the fact that they could ill-afford to lose the lead before setting up the diamonds, they finessed the HT. This had approximately a 25% chance of success. Partner was unlucky. From there on, there simply wasn't time to get the diamonds going. The result? Down 2 instead of making 6. But it was IMPs, so the three overtricks we didn't make were just gravy (or lack thereof).

The next, however, surpassed even this.

The funny thing is that, after the hand, CHO messaged me to say "look at the other tables to see how you should bid this hand." Some had opened the West hand (not terrible), some Norths didn't open 2D. Of the Wests where the first round of bidding was the same, some bid only 2H (but their partners still got them to game). One player bid 4H (obviously, if I'd known anything about CHO I would have done the same). But most, like me, bid 3H. No other partnership got the magic +230, nor yet 1430. That was another 10 IMPs.

The next hand was interesting. Neither I nor my CHO did anything terrible:

RHO got a bit lucky that North didn't have four clubs to the J as he might have done. If he doesn't cash his clubs out, we can easily come to 10 tricks. You can blame me for not bidding 3NT instead of 1S. But, seriously, although this rated to be a not uncommon result, it was in fact unique. Lose another 8.

I managed to staunch the flow a bit over the next three boards, for only another 7 IMPs. The third one of these offered 12 tricks to the opponents, but nobody bid the slam.

Most Wests opened the bidding with 4D, some 3D and at least one opened 1D. In every one of these cases, East bid his hearts and 4H was made. There is an argument for 1D but I think it's better to get the hand off one's chest right away. 8 IMPs.

The next board was an unmitigated disaster and I was significantly responsible for it.

Believing my partner to have no defense against 5D (he passed in a forcing pass situation), I decided to try for 5H. I took a while to decide whether to run the HT and cost us an additional 4.5 IMPs (over the 7 we were destined for) when I changed my mind and went up with the ace. Of course, most of the players in these events have no concept of a forcing pass, so it was silly to take such an inference.

Here is the final exhibit:

Watching the play as dummy, I was praying for my partner to claim before anything bad happened. My prayers went unanswered and he decided to take a practice finesse at trick 8. Lose another 9.

At this point, I was an incredible 62.5 IMPs under water on only ten boards! I did manage to get some back on the last board, but surely this is a record. I'm hoping that someone will nominate me for the Guiness Book of Records.

Breaking BADD

What's "BADD," I hear you ask. It stands for Bridge-related Attention Deficit Disorder. However hard I try, I just can't break it. I try to concentrate, I stay hydrated, I skip lunch. I get the occasional coffee. It all helps, but somehow I just can't stay 100% focussed.

This last week I played four days of bridge (and evening side games) at the Granite State Getaway tournament in Nashua, NH. During that time, I revoked, exposed three penalty cards forgot my notrump range, and various other lapses of concentration too numerous to mention.

But today's was such a classic, and involved such an unlikely parlay that I just have to tell you about it. It's like one of those terrible plays that a goalkeeper makes when he doesn't properly clear the ball. A perfect example of that occurred just this week in the World Cup matchup of Argentina vs. Croatia. Caballero, the Argentine goalie, failed to properly clear the ball and Rebić scored a brilliant goal to help Croatia to a 3-0 win.

So back to my play. Here was the board:

As you can see, our bidding was reasonably sophisticated. 2S was the "impossible spade," showing a good club fit and a game invitation. 3H suggested that spades may not be a problem, but was checking on the heart situation. 3NT is a good contract, making 9 tricks on a spade lead and 10 on any other lead. I got a heart lead and soon set about making overtricks.

The H3 was led, I played low from dummy and took the queen with the ace. I ducked a diamond to the ten and East's jack. A heart came back to West's king and after cashing the spade ace, he returned a heart to my jack. On this trick, I had to find a discard. At this point, I had nice rock-solid tricks and was interested in making the rest. In fact, I have the rest of the tricks just by cashing one spade, two diamonds and five clubs in addition to the two hearts already in the bag. At this point, they had three tricks so that's all there is.

But somehow, my counting was off and I thought I should at least try to generate an extra trick. In order that I wouldn't have to decide now whether to pitch the small diamond or the small spade, I pitched the totally unnecessary ace of clubs. Now, I set about cashing the top spade and then the clubs. I cashed the king and queen, then overtook the ten with the jack. At this point I realized (duh!) that there were no more losers so I faced the C8 and claimed the rest. "Not so fast," says West and produced the nine. Since I had no longer a stopper in spades, the defense took the next two tricks for down 2.

Pretty embarrassing! This "coup" should really have a name. Here's what was necessary to pull it off:

1. miscount the tricks so that I was in effect looking for a tenth trick with a squeeze that was extremely unlikely to succeed and, so, "unblock" one of the high honors in my club suit;
2. unblock the high spade (for the phantom squeeze, I could equally have chosen to keep the SK and unblock the DA);
3. not notice that East showed out of clubs at the first trick and then overtake the ten with the jack (when I could just as easily have used the DK as the reentry to my hand);
4. not notice even then that I had a total of seven tricks facing my way and didn't need a club for my contract: all I had to do was to cash the top two diamonds.

Four separate errors in one hand. Of course, errors 2 thru 4 all arose as a consequence of error #1. But, at any point, I could have quite easily recovered.

The his perhaps the most egregious, hilarious, and simply bizarre display of incompetence I've ever encountered, let alone, perpetrated!

So, how does an otherwise reasonably intelligent brain come up with this sort of thing? I don't know. I just call it BADD and do what I can to avoid it.

My teammates were remarkably understanding. This 10-IMP error (the contract at the other table was 5C down 1) cost us 3.45 victory points which normally would have meant a drop of several places in the standings. But, remarkably, it made no difference at all! We were sixth overall and second in X for a little over 11 masterpoints.

And, to add icing to the cake, England beat Panama 6-1 this morning in the World Cup!

How many errors can GIB make on one hand?

The other day, I was playing one of those 25 cent all-day tournaments on BBO (IMPs). On the last hand (none vulnerable), my GIB partner picked up the following hand: ♠5 ♥J875 ♦96 ♣AK8763. RHO dealt and passed, as did GIB. LHO opened 1♠ and partner overcalled 2♦. RHO now raised the stakes with 2♠. You have some useful looking values. What do you call?

Double (technically a "responsive" double here, but I'm treating it as just another competitive double) would suggest sufficient points for it to be our hand, four hearts and four clubs (maybe five if the suit is not headed by good honors). The other four or five cards should be one or two diamonds (else why not raise?), and two--possibly three--spades. In other words, a relatively balanced hand with both the round suits, and about 10 or more points.

Why do I say at least two spades? Because experience has taught me that when you are short in the opponents trump suit, if partner leaves it in, those little trumps that you do not have will be in declarer's (or dummy's) hand. And it's slightly more more likely that partner will have four and leave it in with the hope that the opponents are on a seven- (or at most eight-) card fit.

And why should you have the balance of power? Because whether you choose to play in a possibly poor trump fit, or to defend a doubled contract of the opponents', you need to have some reasonable expectation of making or setting them, as the case may be. This is especially true at IMPs where an injudicious contract our way can get doubled and go for quite a number, or where doubling their part-score into game could be very expensive. You should aim to have at least 22 hcp between your two hands if you're forcing partner to bid at the three level (or defend). In this case, we can assume partner has 12 hcp (he did make a 2/1 overcall) so we should have 10.

Here, we have too few hcp (eight) and too few spades (singleton). Not a hand to double, therefore.

What about 3♣? Well, if you do bid here, you should have a good honor sequence so that partner's lead of your suit (if we end up defending) isn't an instant own goal. And, you should have at least a decent five-card suit with some tolerance for partner's suit in case he has to go back to his suit. 3♣ would be the perfect bid here! You have the very best possible lead-directional suit, headed by AK. And a doubleton diamond on the side.

Eschewing the obvious 3♣ bid (you don't want to miss a 4-4 heart fit!) you double and partner, trusting your judgment, passes. It's unfortunate because 5♣ our way is cold (partner has Qxx and they split 2-2). Partner leads a trump, not his diamonds. What do you deduce from that? Possibly a broken suit, so the hand has scattered honors. After drawing trumps, declarer starts to eliminate clubs. You win and lead your ♦9 covered by ten, jack, ace. A second club comes which you win and now there's one obvious card in your hand that will set the contract--your other diamond. But being the GIB, you don't worry about partner getting endplayed and you lead a heart. Game over.

Elementary deception

Continuing my series on common beginner mistakes, I want to talk about perhaps the most elementary case of deception, or hiding your assets, in bridge.

But, first, let's look at a hand. Matchpoints, all vulnerable, you are in fourth seat holding: ♠K962 ♥KQ ♦2 ♣KT7654. Partner opens 1♣, playing more or less standard methods, you bid 1♠ and partner raises to 2♠. What now? You have a decent 11-count with a side singleton and a double fit. I presume you aren't planning to pass. Make your plan:

• invite game?
• bid game?
• invite slam?

Have you made up your mind? Is there anyone out there who's going to invite slam? It seems a stretch to me given that partner raised only to 2♠. But, I suppose it's possible: ♠AQxx ♥xx ♦Axx ♣Axxx. Of course, many would have already upgraded this perfect hand to 1NT, especially if non-vulnerable. If the black suits split favorably, you have twelve easy tricks. Or, if there's a stiff quack in the clubs, you might still be able to pick up the suit. But, presumably, if you were making a slam try, you would bid 4♦ to simultaneously establish a game-force (with slam aspirations) and to let partner know that any lower honors in diamonds would be wasted. With the perfecto sample hand given, you would bid 5♣ and partner should take it from there.

I'm sure you would simply raise to 4♠. But, suppose for a moment, that you decided to invite game. How would you go about it? I assume you would bid 3♣ and then pass whatever partner decided on. But, couldn't you have your cake and eat it too? Why not use the good old three-way invitation? Bid 3♣ and if partner bids 3♠ immediately (or passes) you'll play it there. If he bids 4♠, all well and good. But if he thinks for a bit and then bids 3♠ he's obviously got some sort of intermediate hand and now you can raise to 4♠. Sound like a plan?

No! The laws of bridge expressly forbid you to take any inference from the manner in which partner makes his bid. You must act as if you were absent from the table during the period between LHO's pass and partner's bid. To use the jargon of the rule book, that information is unauthorized. When partner's bid is 3♠, you must respect his decision, however much soul-searching he/she might have gone through. Remember: you didn't see (or hear) any of it.

I only bring this up because it happened in a recent club game. A pair who certainly should know better had this exact auction and, guess what, the spade bidder raised to 4♠, making. Yes, I called the director but, despite the fact that the opponents didn't dispute the hesitation (that's the usual defense), the director ruled that the 4♠ was OK because "maybe he was looking for slam". Most tables played in 4♠, as you'd expect, although there were a few 3♠ and club contracts too. We got slightly below average for holding it to ten tricks (some declarers actually managed to go down in 4♠ although I don't see how that was possible).

OK, back to the real point of this blog.

The opening lead is a small diamond (fourth best) and dummy has K9. You play the 9 and RHO wins the J. The ♥9 comes back. Which card do you play?

Some of you, the ones this article is aimed at, will say it doesn't matter. The one nearest my thumb. Or, worse, you will automatically play the lower honor, the queen in this case. I see this mistake all the time. You are probably expecting LHO to have the ace and, therefore, it won't make any difference. When we played this hand, declarer played the queen and it won the trick. The RHO (moi) holding A98x, now knew that his partner did not hold the king and so I was able to work out exactly which cards declarer did hold. It really didn't matter in this case. There was no defense to set the contract. But why give the opponents that information? They don't deserve it!

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The so-called Anna Karenina principle, quoted in the title, applies to so many walks of life. This weekend, playing with Symphony Pro Musica, I am reminded forcefully that, while music performance is not a perfect example of the AK principle--especially for professional musicians--nevertheless it is close. A perfect performance is indeed very much like another perfect performance. Again, I hasten to add that there is yet plenty of scope for differences among "perfect" performances at the highest levels of the art. But, for a non-professional orchestra, where mistakes can and do happen, there are many more ways to mar a performance than there are ways to play it perfectly. In ensemble playing, every note must be:

• properly formed (not a squeak or croak) and with the appropriate degree of vibrato;
• the correct note (duh!);
• in tune (and an orchestra's domain is not the equi-tempered scale of keyboards so playing in tune requires constant attention);
• in time (not more than a few milliseconds early or late);
• at the proper dynamic level;
• exhibiting the correct emphasis/style.

When you have forty or fifty independent players in a (non-professional) orchestra, each playing say a thousand notes, the chances of a perfect performance are obviously small. That's not to say that the performance cannot still be very much enjoyed by the audience. On the contrary, one of the most essential aspects of musical performance is the freshness and immediacy of the performance.

So, what does all this have to do with bridge? A hand of bridge is another endeavor in which perfection is possible, but the number of ways to achieve the perfect result (from both sides' point of view) is small, whereas the number of ways to err is vastly greater. In other words, a hand of bridge is another exemplar of AK. I note with interest that we bridge players have another thing in mind when we use the letters "AK."

One of my favorite tools for researching this idea is BBO's GIB analyzer. At each player's turn, you can check to see which cards are the correct ones to play and which the incorrect. The only flaw is that GIB will tell you the immediate ("proximal") effect of the play of a card, but it cannot (or doesn't) tell you the "distal" effect, taking into account the reaction of the player's partner (this in the case of a defender). As an example, defending a suit contract, partner opens with the appropriate card of his "AK" holding in a side suit. Dummy has two cards in the suit. You have both the queen and the jack and perhaps some other cards. From GIB's point of view the play of the Q or J is entirely equivalent. But which you choose can have a major difference to the result when partner leads to the next trick. Still, the GIB tool is an invaluable resource.

As an example, let me share this defensive problem (note that it wasn't necessary to ask GIB this time). It's the second board of the session and you hold ♠75 ♥9432 ♦AK65 ♣982, not vulnerable vs. vulnerable, dealer. You pass and LHO opens 1NT (15-17). Partner passes and RHO bids 3NT, alerted. Opener now bids 4S which is passed out. Partner asks before leading and we are told that dummy has four spades and five hearts. "No," dummy says, 3NT means I want to play in 3NT.

Partner leads the deuce of diamonds (third and lowest) and dummy comes down with: ♠T843 ♥AKT ♦T98 ♣AT3. Well, he does have four spades. You can see that this is going to be a tough session. Even when the opponents have a major misunderstanding, they land on their feet. Anyway, you win the king and now contemplate your lead to trick two.

You have twelve cards in your hand and I can tell you now that there are only two correct cards to play (and they are absolutely alike) while there are ten possible errors to make. A perfect example of the AK principle.

This is how your thinking should be going. Partner has either one, three or five diamonds. Five is ruled out because LHO opened 1NT. That leaves one or three. If it's one, that means opener has five which is quite possible. We have no outside entry so it seems reasonable to cash the ace and give partner his ruff. Perhaps we should give him the ruff now as the diamond ace can't go to bed. What if he led from Qx2, which appears probabilistically to be the most likely holding (he wouldn't tend to lead from a xxx side suit after this auction)? Then we'll always get our three diamond tricks. This is true whether he started with three or one (where the Q will be replaced by a ruff). Does anything else jump out?

Could he also have Jxx of trumps? Yes, this is entirely possible (we expect opener to have four spades). If partner's trumps are any better than this, he'll be getting a spade trick anyway, whatever we do. Providing that we are on lead at trick four, that hypothetical trump trick can be promoted by playing the thirteenth diamond!

The problem might have been easier at IMPs where all that matters is defeating the contract. At MPs, it's important not to give away silly overtricks, chasing some chimera. Yet, this problem is no harder than playing a scale in a major key. Unfortunately, I didn't think it through quite as well as I've shown here. I picked one of the ten unhappy cards (♦A) instead of either of the two happy cards: the five or six of diamonds.

Asleep at the switch

To my faithful readers: for some reason, Blogger/Blogspot has "fixed" something that wasn't broken and needless to say they haven't provided any explanation for it. The upshot is that I can no longer post hand diagrams (I can only link to BBO for rendering in a separate window). I've tried BridgeBlogging but apparently they unimpressed by my material (and were insufficiently polite to mention that fact to me). Anyone got any ideas whither I could transfer my bridge blog?

Meanwhile I still suffer the craziness of sitting at random tables when I have a few minutes to spare but no more. The errors that players make simply astound me. Was I ever that bad, I wonder? No, I don't think so. At least, I hope not!

Here's the latest misdemeanor: random hand at random table. Notice how disciplined I was not doubling 5D, although it certainly looked like it was going down. One ill-advised player did double 5D (see below). When dummy came down, I was surprised how good it was, but this kind of leap to game is not at all uncommon for beginners. Especially after a weak-two opener, they just don't know if, say, 2S would be forcing. Other declarers might be in 6D going down, so it was important to ensure that this contract didn't succeed.

Notice what happens at trick 7. West (declarer) takes a no-win "finesse" of the CQ (is there a name for this type of finesse? Chinese finesse?). I'm flabbergasted at how common such finesses are at these tables. My guess is that there's one every second or third board, especially when my partner is declaring.

But wait, apparently such a finesse can win! All you need is for the one with the K not to cover. Of course, this could never happen if that person was fourth-in-hand. Especially if he/she was looking at the J also. But nevertheless, my partner was asleep at the switch. After that, we have no defense. I get my two trump tricks and that's it. Perhaps I should have ruffed the club continuation which would require declarer to think about the play. But I can only ever come to two trump tricks if declarer plays correctly.

Take two. Things could have been worse. Really, you ask? Look what happened at this table. I have taken the liberty of assigning names from S. J. Simon's Why You Lose at Bridge. It's hard to count the total number of errors ("chucks" in Simon's terminology) committed here. I could post an ATB on BridgeWinners, I suppose but there's really just too much sin all round. First, do we agree with The Unlucky Expert's opening bid 1D? It's a tough call. 2D, the bid at my table, is flawed for various reasons, notably the void, the bad suit and too many stray queens. But is this hand good enough for 1D? Zar says it is (28 before any negative texture adjustment which meets the threshold of 26). KR puts it at 11.8 which is not quite an opening bid for most of us, I think.

In any case, 1D seems reasonable. Mrs. Guggenheim responds 2C which is just plain bizarre when she has more spades than clubs. Maybe she just wanted to announce the strength of her hand immediately, and a two-bid sounds so much stronger than a mere one-bid. Mr. Smug now says 3S, an appalling bid--but quite normal for Mr. Smug. Perhaps not the worst bid in the history of bridge, but certainly a doozy! The Unlucky Expert, who by rights has nothing to say, naturally bids 4D (to show his six-card suit)--Mrs. Guggenheim must have been just itching to double. Futile Willy, under the mistaken impression that his partner has something, decides to double this (cold) contract. Does he really think that he's getting this freely bid contract down more than one? Particularly, when he has such good support for his partner's "suit." Wouldn't you think that Mrs. Guggenheim would be ecstatic for her partner to be in 4DX? No, the scoring table was never her strong point and she decides to "take it out" into the diamond game.

The rest of the auction is inevitable and hardly worth mentioning. Futile Willy, his manhood so dreadfully impugned by Mrs. Guggenheim's 5D, must double again. And, when this comes around to the Unlucky Expert, he just knows that the contract is cold as Mrs. Guggenheim always has her bid if she bids a game. The fact that his own bidding has hitherto shown a decent hand with good diamonds is immaterial. He redoubles.

Now for the play. It would never occur to Futile Willy to lead low from Qxx of his partner's suit so he leads the SQ. No matter, it makes no difference this time. Declarer takes dummy's ace and crosses to his own HA. Based on the auction, he can be pretty confident that a finesse of the nine will succeed and indeed it does. Of course, he still should be down at this point but he knows the caliber of his opponents and is not worried. He decides to sneak a club through Mr. Smug who surely has the CK for his ridiculous spade bid. The latter, confident that his king cannot "go away" (does he imagine that declarer started with five clubs and never raised his partner?) plays low smoothly. At this point, The Unlucky Expert could claim but naturally he drags it out to the bitter end to extract the maximum degree of squirming from his two gentleman opponents.

This hand would have been a pretty good "Goulash" hand. 16 tables played it and the range of scores was +1600 (4SXXE-4) to -800 (the latter being our heroes' result). That's a spread of 29.8 IMPs! The par result is actually 400 E/W for 3NT which cannot be touched. This was reached by the perfectly appropriate auction (N/S silent): P--1S--2D--3D--3NT.

Making sense of BBO skill levels

One of the fascinating things about BBO is the self-assignment of skill level. There are six levels to choose from plus "private". These are World Class, Expert, Advanced, Intermediate, Beginner, Novice. Probably the two most abused are expert and advanced. I've never seen anyone who judges themselves to be World Class to be incorrectly described (perhaps BBO monitors this level, I don't know). But I've seen plenty people self-assign themselves as expert whose claim to expertise in the game of bridge is questionable at best. BTW, I describe myself as expert too. Whether I am in the eyes of my fellow real-life bridge players is certainly open to question. But I feel obliged to do so in practice, by comparison with many other "experts" on BBO. I really have no idea what the criteria for these skill levels should be.

Here's the official BBO description of the levels in each case followed (in italics) by my take based on actual experience:

Novice
Someone who recently learned to play bridge — like, today, er... just now.
Beginner
Someone who has played bridge for less than one year — more like less than a month and may not have played at a club.
Intermediate
Someone who is comparable in skill to most other members of BBO — someone who is reasonably honest about their skill level but who hasn't really progressed much from the beginner stage.
Advanced
Someone who has been consistently successful in clubs or minor tournaments — someone who has been playing too long to describe themselves any other way.
Expert
Someone who has enjoyed success in major national tournaments — someone who can count to 13, especially in the trump suit; may actually know what an endplay is and perhaps has actually pulled one off; knows that underleading an ace at a suit contract is generally a bad idea.
World Class
Someone who has represented their country in World Championships — a real expert.

These BBO descriptions of course beg the question: what defines success? Do you have to win a major national tournament event to be an expert? Or is it sufficient to have placed in the overalls, or got a section top? What about bracketed KOs? Must you have won the top bracket? What about Midnight KOs? What about single-session consolation events like a Swiss? I think it's all just a bit too vague.

So, I've been compiling a list of the types of errors that I see perpetrated by the various levels. Many of these observations come from individual tournaments, or just sitting at a random table (although it's rare to find anyone who claims to be an expert sitting at such tables — I only do it when I don't have time for a real game). So, here goes:

Intermediate:

• Fails to notice that an opponent has shown out of a suit and/or fails to appreciate that said suit is now going to block if we aren't careful.
• Thinks that the double of a 1NT overcall is for takeout.
• Discards potential winners instead of likely losers when declaring a hand (one suit is 97 opposite AJT6 [two tricks are certain], the other suit is AQ87 opposite 543 [82% chance of two tricks]).
• With ♠Q9654 ♥AK ♦95 ♣KQJ4, after this auction (IMPs, none vulnerable, dealer is on the left): p p 1♦ 1♠ 2♦ 3♦ 4♦, prefers to bid 5♣ rather than waiting to see what partner is going to do (result: -100 instead of +420).
• Bids 1♠ only with ♠AJ62 ♥AJ86 ♦5 ♣KJ64 when (all vulnerable) LHO opens 1♥ and partner doubles.
• Raises partner's 1♠ (previous comment) to 2♠ over an intervening double with ♠Q843 ♥75 ♦AK864 ♣Q2. [This pair bids all the way up to 4♠ but opener's partner has KT975 of trumps and wields the axe for a top. (or 8 IMPs if it were teams)].
• Deals and opens ♠AK8 ♥void ♦AQJT9862 ♣A2 with a diamond preempt.

Advanced:

• Doesn't notice that this is a 1NT opener, playing SAYC: ♠752 ♥J765 ♦AK5 ♣AK6.
• Despite having no entry while defending 3NT, and despite dummy positively bristling with winning black cards, continues a third trick in own suit (hearts) which is 100% sure to be won by declarer rather than switching to diamonds which would win his side two more tricks.
• With this hand: ♠AJ64 ♥J952 ♦Q95 ♣65, and hearing the following auction (none vulnerable, starting on your left): 1♣ p 1♠ p 2♠ Dble, decides that this is a good time to penalize those pesky opponents and passes — result -470 instead of -100 (or -50 or +50).
• With this hand ♠Q763 ♥K5 ♦AKQJT ♣T3 (vulnerable vs. not) after one pass on right: 1♦ 2♣ p p 2♦ Dble p p p. Dummy comes down with ♠T954 ♥T643 ♦9 ♣AQ95. The lead is a trump which you have to win in hand. You are very fortunate in having two club stoppers which will give you time to establish a spade trick or two. But the first thing you do is to use up those club stoppers so that you have to use your good trumps to swat clubs instead of establishing your own tricks.
• Believes that a balanced 18-count is enough to bid a major suit game opposite a single raise by partner at matchpoints.
• At favorable vulnerability with ♠QJT8652 ♥void ♦AK64 ♣T9 overcalls 1♥ with 4♠, then after 5♣, double, 6♣ [sic], naturally rebids 6♦. 
• Over 4♥ by RHO (nobody vulnerable, Goulash hand), bids 4♠ with ♠AK98 ♥A ♦53 ♣KJT764.
• The only way I can do this advanced player justice is to show the whole hand (from an individual):

Note that I made five calls during the auction: two redoubles and three doubles. What fun! If you click on the GIB button, you'll see that as long as I start with a high club (what else?) we are destined for +500. Unfortunately, it's now necessary to switch to a low spade to keep our 500. That seemed contraindicated to me so I switched to the ♥J. Down to 300, although I'm still on lead and now any small black card will get us back to 500. I'm fairly keen to avoid setting up a winner in dummy because I want to protect my partner's diamonds. Alas, I continued a heart. Partner gets in and at trick 5 he plays... a small diamond! A two-trick error. Wasn't it blindingly obvious that declarer has the missing diamonds? At this point, we have gone from +500 (an 83% board) to -490 (a swing of almost 1000 points and a 0% board).

Expert:

• Holding ♠J97 ♥J93 ♦KQ4 ♣AJ54 (none vul) and having dealt and opened, after the auction (opps silent): 1♣—1♥—1NT—2♠, passes (not a tragedy because about a third of the declarers in 3NT went down).
• Holding ♠AKQ53 ♥JT76 ♦742 ♣J (all vulnerable) and hearing partner open 1♣, responding 1♠, hearing double by LHO (a passed hand) followed by pass and 1NT, decides to bid 2♠. [When the same auction happened at another table, a real expert doubled for blood and ended up with 800].
• Holding ♠J9 ♥Q52 ♦AQ6 ♣AK983, having opened 1NT and hearing partner transfer into hearts and then bid 2♠, bids 2NT [The opponents mis-defend but we still get a poor score because everyone is making 10 tricks in hearts, some in game, some not].

I hasten to add that I have occasionally made some pretty big blunders on BBO myself when not really concentrating. Perhaps these good people that I reference here were talking on the phone, watching the telly, or otherwise multi-tasking. But here's the difference. When I make an error, I apologize to partner after the hand. The perpetrators of the foregoing mistakes seemed to be completely oblivious.

Slings, Arrows and Flying Cows

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are definitely one of the factors that make our game of Bridge so interesting. While the game isn't completely random of course, there is a large element of randomness. It's basically all about avoiding errors – of which there are many varieties. Did you know for example that if your partnership is absolutely average amongst your opponents, you can expect to score over 60% (or below 40%) about once in every thirty sessions?

One of the most difficult to overcome of the panoply of Bridge errors is the personal unforced goof (PUG). You know it also by another somewhat more scatological expression. When an expert makes this sort of error and is asked about it later, he or she can only come up with something like "a cow flew by."

I've thought about consulting a Zen master to try to help me eliminate these sorts of errors but I haven't found one yet. A regimen of water (plenty of it) and relatively light meals does seem to help. Brown rice seems to help a little. When Kim is my partner and I do something goofy she reminds me to drink some more water (or Gatorade if we have it). But if she's at another table, I'm liable to forget, with possibly serious consequences for my health, both bridge-related and otherwise.

Over the weekend, we went up to Newington, NH for the pairs on Saturday and the teams on Sunday. I've played with my pairs partner twice before. I had two partners for the Swiss, neither of whom I'd played with before. That made it all the more challenging and enjoyable. One of my teams partners was 13-year-old Zach, who might easily go unnoticed by comparison with his World Youth Champion brother Adam. But Zach is a terrific player whom I think could easily turn out better even than his brother.

On the first hand we played together, Zach opened a rather light hand. We found a fit and I was heading to a slam when I had to put the brakes on. We were missing two key cards. The trumps split 4-1 and I had to think about the hand for a while before coming up with a plan. My plan relied on a squeeze that I thought was probably about 75% or better based on the way the play went. I made the contract. Zach pointed out, very politely I might add, that I could have saved myself a lot of trouble ruffing an extra trick in dummy (a plan which I had thought was in danger of losing control). I was skeptical but eventually figured out that he was right.

We had a good time, though we seemed to be a little unlucky at times and, as a team, never really got into the groove until we'd already dug a deep hole. We just managed to scratch in B.

Here's an example of the kind of goof I referred to above (if I was a bit older perhaps I might call it a "senior moment"). I picked up a 4441 17-count and opened 1D. Partner jumped to 3NT. In my mind I was evaluating our chances based on his having 15-17 hcp (I wasn't too worried about clubs because he had to have at least four of them). I bid 6NT and it went down one. Where did I get that idea from? Nobody I know plays 3NT that way (including me), although I've certainly heard of such an agreement (it's part of the old Standard American, I believe). I just think the wires got crossed on the way out of my memory banks.

It's annoying as anything in Bridge can be. And it's hard for anyone else to even comprehend it. But if ever I find that Zen master, maybe I can do something to eliminate this sort of flying cow play.